"Mike Kelly was sold to Boston for $10,000. Mike got half of the purchase price. He came up to me and showed me a check for $5,000. John L. Sullivan, the champion fighter, went around with a subscription paper and the boys raised over $12,000 to buy Mike a house.
"Bill, I'm Proud of You!"
"They gave Mike a deed to the house and they had $1,500 left and gave him a certificate of deposit for that.
"His salary for playing with Boston was $4,700 a year. At the end of that season Mike had spent the $5,000 purchase price and the $4,700 he received as salary and the $1,500 they gave him and had a mortgage on the house. And when he died in Pennsylvania they went around with a subscription to get money enough to put him in the ground, and each club, twelve in all, in the two leagues gave a month a year to his wife. Mike sat here on the corner with me twenty-seven years ago, when I said, 'Good-bye, boys, I'm going to Jesus Christ.'
"A. G. Spalding signed up a team to go around the world. I was the second he asked to sign a contract and Captain Anson was the first. I was sliding to second base one day. I always slid head first, and hit a stone and cut a ligament loose in my knee.
"I got Dr. Magruder, who attended Garfield when he was shot, and he said:
"'William, if you don't go on that trip I will give you a good leg.' I obeyed and have as good a leg today as I ever had. They offered to wait for me at Honolulu and Australia. Spalding said, 'Meet us in England, and play with us through England, Scotland and Wales.' I didn't go.
"Ed Williamson, our old short-stop, a fellow weighing 225 pounds, was the most active big man you ever saw. He went with them, and while they were on the ship crossing the English channel a storm arose and the captain thought the ship would go down. Williamson tied two life-preservers on himself and one on his wife and dropped on his knees and prayed and promised God to be true. God spoke and the waves were stilled. They came back to the United States and Ed came back to Chicago and started a saloon on Dearborn Street. I would go through there giving tickets for the Y. M. C. A. meetings and would talk with them and he would cry like a baby.
"I would get down and pray for him, and would talk with him. When he died they put him on the table and cut him open and took out his liver and it was so big it would not go in a candy bucket. Kidneys had shriveled until they were like two stones.